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Topic: What do you traditionally serve for holiday meal and why? (Read 7576 times)

We don't have a set holiday meal. Lately, we've been making a lot of lamb for holiday meals. I also make pineapple upside cake from scratch as it's the only dessert DH and I agree on. I use the cook's illustrated recipe.

If we stay in Houston for Christmas, I'll be getting a duck stuffed with something (not sure what) from Hebert's again. The shrimp and wild rice one was heavenly 2 years ago.

The other vegetables vary. Thanksgiving is pumpkin pie. Christmas is raspberry pie. It used to be plum pudding but after my Mom died 10 years ago, we discovered no one but me really liked it. And it is labour intensive to make so I haven't been making it.

Christmas morning has been chelsea buns lately. Which is a cinnamon bun type thing with raisins. I make these ahead and freeze them.

New Year's used to be ham, when my Mom was alive and we all were home for New Year's dinner.

We love turkey so it isn't unheard of for us to do a turkey for Easter dinner, too.

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After cleaning out my Dad's house, I have this advice: If you haven't used it in a year, throw it out!!!!.

My family is as fiercely defensive of their Christmas Eve pizza as other people are about their turkey on Thanksgiving.

Many years ago, when Christmas made some shifts in my family, my grandma became the Christmas eve hostess (instead of her mom). We kids had the idea of making things extremely fancy and uber-traditional--but my dad knew just how much his mom was struggling to keep up with everything right then. He approached us kids with the problem, and asked if there was something EASY we would all like.So we told grandma that as good as her ham/turkey/whatever was, we were being kids and voting in favor of PIZZA. She asked if we were sure--we were adamant that nothing would do except pizza.That was almost 30? years ago.A few years ago, when my dad took over hosting, he tried to suggest we go with something fancy and uber-traditional--but my sisters and I knew how much of a struggle my dad was having with all of this--and we actually have no shortage of traditional/fancy/what have you meals with our family--this is our chance to buck all of that and enjoy the relaxed parents who don't have to worry about the meal.So we voted for pizza.

Our Christmas dinner is usually the same as our Thanksgiving dinner (turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, gravy, etc) but what are really different is the deserts! At Thanksgiving, there is Pumpkin Pie and then a Berry pie (Saskatoon, wild blueberry, or huckleberry). That's it.

At Christmas though? We have puddings, and cookies (shortbread, gingersnaps, sugar cookies, anise almond/pecan, Santa Claus cookies), and if there are pies it is Pumpkin or Lemon meringue. Oh and the BUTTER TARTS! YUM.

I'm making a double batch of gingersnaps right this minute, and I really think I should have used a bigger bowl.. Lol.

Thanksgiving is pretty much the same meal as it was when I was growing up and probably always will be.

Christmas morning is always pigs in a blanket, tamales and mimosas for the adults, apple cider for the kids.

I had sisters who were 10 & 13 years older than me. As the younger child, my mom knew I was always impatient for those lazy teen agers and later young adults to get out of bed so we could open gifts. To give me something to do and keep some peace she started having me make pigs in the blanket. And the deal was that when the pigs were done everyone had to be up and in the living room ready for breakfast. But my mom made sure to come up with a scheme to make it take a lot longer. 1. Melt butter and add a hint of sage. 2. Cook breakfast sausge in a little bit of water to get some of the oil out, let them cool, wipe them off really well. 3. Butter the baking pans. 4. Roll out and separate each of the rolls from the Pillsbury can and spread each side with butter and just a tiny bit of black pepper. 5. Carefully roll each one up so that they all matched exactly. 6. Put in fridge for 15 min.I could only then start pre-heating the oven because mom said the rolls needed to rest in the fridge which now I realized just mean they were colder and took longer to bake. So what really should have taken me about 5 min from fridge to oven and another 10 to bake ended up being almost an hour long exercise, especially for a 6 year old. Oddly enough, our kids were never up before DH and I on Xmas morning, so I'm still in the kitchen painstakingly making perfect pigs while I awaiting my sleepy head kids to wake up. The tamales is a Texas tradition.

DH's family always had them on Xmas Eve. His dad was in charge of Xmas Day breakfast for the kids and one year he just heated up left over tamales and it became a tradition with them. They really are the pefect breakfast food.

Christmas dinner varries from Beef Tenderloin to Prime Rib to Proscuitto stuffed pork tenderloin. We haven't had turkey on Christmas in more than a decade.

Growing up, my family has baked ham because they are pricey except during the holiday sales. Even nowadays when we can afford it at other times of the year, we still only have baked ham for holidays so it stays special. Stays as something to look forward to.

Wow some really interesting Christmas traditions I'd never have imagined here! Christmas eve isn't a big deal for us, we just grab a quick meal, perhaps takeaways, and chill out.

Christmas morning I make pancakes and have them with syrup, but that's a fairly recent tradition I've started. When I was a kid we had fruit and snacks in our Christmas stockings (which were left on our beds) so ate that for breakfast while our parents slept in.

Christmas day in my family is all about the roast meal which we have around 2pm. There's roast chicken, stuffing, roast potatoes, sweet potato, and pumpkin. And some green peas or beans. There is also a ham on the bone, usually served cold.

We always take a break after eating the main course to open presents and just chill out, let the food settle and drink more. There are always lots of chocolate and candy and snack food being consumed through the day!

Then later for dessert there is always a pavlova, fruit salad, and sometimes some Christmas pudding but always a store bought microwave kind as most people aren't big pudding fans. It's more about the fresh fruit and berries for us being in this hemisphere! I understand from my European friends that this is quite a contrast to over there where Christmas isn't associated with fresh berries!

Growing up, my mom had a thing about eating breakfast (and cleaning up!) before opening presents. I was the oldest of 7, so there were a lot of presents.

She would always get the Kellogg's variety pack. It had the 8 little boxes, and it was A BIG DEAL. We didn't get name brand cereal any other time, not to mention SUGAR cereal. We would always decide who got which box DAYS before Christmas.

My partner's family has "pink puke" on family dinners/get togethers. It's a pink Jello/cottage cheese/something else concoction that's actually really disgusting. Apparently one occasion they ate it and all got food poisoning. Hence it's called pink puke. Fortunately, we don't have contact with them anymore, so don't have to partake.

I'm in the UK so we don't "do" Thanksgiving, and therefore Christmas is traditionally the turkey meal.

I ate turkey every Christmas until last year. Having cooked 18 turkeys over the years, I was sick of it. I don't particularly *like* turkey. I like the trimmings, but I can (and frequently do) have them with other roast meats. There's just so much to do to make a turkey nice and moist.

So last year, I asked DH what he wanted for Christmas dinner (he also doesn't particularly like turkey). He said steak.

So steak we had.

Fillet steak, two each (such decadence), about 1.5 inches thick, served with jacket potatoes (with butter and soured cream), corn on the cob and mushrooms (for me) and peas (for hubby).

It was the most stress free, wonderful Christmas meal I've ever cooked and I vowed, while sitting there with meat sweats, that I'm never cooking a turkey ever again.

My steak has already been ordered for this year. However, I am going to roast a chicken on Christmas Day so that I can make leftover sandwiches and curry out of it!

We celebrate on Christmas Eve. Traditionally, everyone would wait up, have a late dinner, go to Midnight Mass and, then (after midnight, so technically Christmas Day), exchange gifts. My atheist/agnostic family would skip Midnight Mass and the kids were sent up to get some sleep/nap at around 8pm and then be called down for Christmas Diner at 10pm. Then gifts would be opened at midnight.

There would be all sorts of appetizers and little snacks out for the adults, throughout the evening. The kids would get a light super before going to bed. Then, at 10pm, we would have fondue for dinner, since it is a slow meal, perfect for chatting and waiting for midnight. Dessert would be Christmas desserts: an assortment of dried fruits, sugared fruits and nuts, panetone (a sweet, fluffy bread filled with fruits and nuts), etc, followed by liqueurs and coffee.

We started doing appetizers a couple of Christmases ago. Since there are only 6 adults we didn't want the whole spread. We do different ones every year. Each couple usually does 3 different apps and we eat when we get hungry. It's made our holiday very relaxed.